Mendoza Swiftly Came Unhinged

In a split second, everything changed for Camarillo High softball catcher Jessica Mendoza.

One moment she was awaiting a fielder’s throw at the plate, the next she was on the ground clutching her knee.

During a tournament game against Hart, Mendoza tore the medial collateral ligament in her left knee when runner Vanessa Raschella collided with her on a play at the plate.

Mendoza went one way, her knee went the other.

“I was blocking the plate down the line,” Mendoza recalled. “The throw was off . . . then I felt it rip.”

For the first time in 10 years of playing baseball and softball, Mendoza, a junior, is out of the lineup.

It’s a crying shame for Camarillo, which has lost four of six games without her.

“When I hurt it, I really didn’t cry,” Mendoza said. “But when I went to the doctor the next day and he told me I would be out for a year . . . I cried for a day straight.”

Apparently, in times like these, there is crying in softball.

For Mendoza, one of the region’s finest players, who batted .329 last season, these are the worst of times.

While her teammates practice, she watches. While her teammates play, she watches.

She’s antsy to get back, and she’s only been out two weeks.

Although she can’t bend her knee, which is in a brace, Mendoza begs her coaches to let her practice.

“I’m on Jess all the time, but that’s only because I was a catcher,” Camarillo Coach Miki Mangan said. “I was always on her when she was practicing. Now I’m always on her because she’s always doing something she’s not supposed to.”

About the only competition Mendoza gets these days is in good-natured arguments with three-sport athlete Joe Borchard over who is riding shotgun in their friend’s car.

“It’s really hard to see her sitting there when I’m used to her right next to me talking about the game,” Camarillo pitcher Cindy Ball said.

Ball and Mendoza have been a winning battery since their freshman seasons, when Coach Darwin Tolzin converted Mendoza from infielder to catcher.

It’s just not the same without her, Ball said.

“I didn’t have to tell her what pitch I wanted to throw, she knew,” Ball said. “It was comforting with her there.”

If things go the way she says they will, the 5-foot-8 Mendoza will be back in the lineup by Thursday.

But consider the source; she’s optimism personified.

“Yeah, and she thinks she’s gonna start throwing tomorrow, too,” Mangan quipped. “But I’m calling the doctor and I’m sure he’ll say, ‘No, no, no.’

“There’s no point in hurting her again and ruining her chance to [play in] college just for a few high school games. I know she won’t see it that way, but. . . .”

Mendoza doesn’t see it that way. Like all athletes who love their sport like a family member, she’s got tunnel vision.

“Softball is my life,” she said.

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Camarillo (4-4) is off to a rough start without Mendoza, to be sure.

But Ball (3-2), a junior right-hander who was 12-2 last season, offered a different view of the Scorpions’ shaky start.

“It’s my number,” Ball said. “I’m going 3 and 2 on all the batters and that’s my number.”

Perhaps she’s right. Last year, she wore No. 12 and struck out 153 in 113 innings.

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Notre Dame High boys’ volleyball Coach Shaney Fink was playing in a beach volleyball tournament, which wasn’t that unusual.

But the Bogota, Colombia, setting and 4,000 or so unfriendly fans were definitely different for Fink and doubles partner Marsha Miller.

Especially when they played a team from Brazil for the tournament championship.

“Every time we did something good, the fans started hissing,” Fink said. “Every time we did something bad, they all whistled. You felt like you were in an aviary.”

Fink and Miller, the only American team in the tournament, were swept by Brazil. Worse, Fink’s backpack was stolen from the players’ tent, and Fink and her partner received only part of their prize money for finishing second.

But the 12-team tournament, which concluded last week, had some pluses. It was all-expenses paid, courtesy of the Colombian Federation, and Fink learned how to dance the salsa.

Correspondent Mike Bresnahan contributed to this column.